


Like An Ocean Wave

by Silver_Queen_DoS



Category: Ocean's 8 (2018)
Genre: F/F, Heist Wives, Peggy Sue, Pre-Movie, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-04 08:56:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20468384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silver_Queen_DoS/pseuds/Silver_Queen_DoS
Summary: Debbie Ocean is excellent at avoiding consequences — it’s a family skill. Just not quite in the way everyone thinks.





	Like An Ocean Wave

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SadieFlood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SadieFlood/gifts).

> Alternate Universe Exchange tag for this request 'ALL: Main character goes back in time to the body of their younger self and changes what happened'.

Debbie doesn’t see the arrest coming. 

One second, they’re having dinner at _Le Coucou_. The lights are low and the food is good and Mr and Mrs Williams are perfectly charming dinner companions. Claude is telling a story about the last model he worked with, something lighthearted and funny with a good tempo that’s making them all laugh. 

Then— 

Mr and Mrs Williams are not a happily married couple interested in buying art, after all. They’re undercover cops and there’s cold metal of handcuffs being clicked around her wrists and a steady voice saying: “You have the right to remain silent.” 

Debbie is silent. She’s silent in the car, silent in the station, silent in the interrogation room where she sits alone, pulling her coat tightly around herself to starve off the cold. 

It’s not just the arrest. It’s not the first time that’s happened — not with her lifestyle, not with her family — but she hadn’t seen it coming. It hadn’t _felt_ dangerous, sitting down to dinner. Not like banking false checks or playing distraction or, hell, walking past mall security with six hundred dollars worth of cosmetics in her hands. 

If she’d been arrested doing those, she’d have known why. 

This… it’s blindsided her. It’d just been her and Claude, selling art. It’s effortless, bloodless, thrillless. The money is nice, but it’s kind of bland and boring, a habit more than anything. 

She’d forgotten, somewhere along the way, that it was even a con at all. 

“Is this your signature?” the cop asks, sliding the file closer to her, so Debbie can see it. “He’s not being as tight lipped as you are.” 

That’s not quite the moment it sinks in. For a while, she thinks Claude is just spinning it, cutting her loose and getting himself out. That’s bad enough but understandable — sometimes a job goes south, sometimes you just do what you have to do to get out. 

It’s not until it unravels a little more, not until Debbie has spent the night in lockup, thinking about it. Not until the lawyer and the cops trying to coax her into confessing, into giving details, tell her the story Claude is spinning. 

He’s not just cutting her loose. 

He set her up. He got her to sign the papers _knowing_ — or at least guessing — that the buyers were cops. 

They’ve been investigating him for some time now and he needed someone to take the fall. 

And he picked _her._

She blinks back tears when the realisation dawns. It’s not the first time she’s been backstabbed on a job, but it’s definitely the one that cuts the deepest. 

Because she’d forgotten it was a con. 

She’d forgotten that it was _always_ a con. 

“Mistake, Claude Becker,” she says to her cold and empty cell. “Don’t you know? An Ocean never takes the fall.” 

Debbie closes her eyes and reaches inside herself for the power that only her family seems to have. 

_We’re like the waves in the ocean, baby, _she remembers her grandmother saying to her, back when she’d been really small. _Roll in, roll out._

They’d been walking along a beach somewhere — LA, maybe — running cons and grifting people with the cuteness of a child. Debbie has the sense memory of the waves crashing on the beach, salt on her lips and wet, tangled hair. 

Ocean, Debbie thinks had probably been an alias her grandmother had chosen, years and years ago. But it was one she’d stuck with, one she’d legally passed along to her son, to her grandchildren, which made it as real as anyone else’s name. 

It was a good name for a family of con artists. For a family who could slide away from consequences, like water rolling off the shore. 

_Catching the wave_, Danny had called it, because he was an idiot and thought he was funny. She’ll never let him know that’s what she calls it too. 

It takes finesse to catch the rolling edge of something powerful and let it deliver you back. Debbie doesn’t really know what happens if you get it wrong — her family all walks along knife edges with the Icarus gleam of success. No one mentions failure. 

Debbie catches it. Debbie rides it back a day, back out of prison, back before dinner, back to breakfast in the morning, back to the night before, where it’s cold and dark and she’s _alone_— 

She steps off the wave. Back into real time. 

“An Ocean never takes the fall,” she repeats, to her empty apartment. “It just… never sticks.” 

He’s not here, he can’t hear her. And, make no mistake, Debbie _is_ going to get her payback for that — it might be undone but she won’t forget. He’s _already_ brought up the idea that she’ll be the one to sign the papers, which means he’s already planned it, has it already in motion. 

There are plenty of things Debbie could do to upset his plans, to turn them back on him. 

But first— 

She goes to find Lou. 

* * *

It’s nearly midnight so Lou is making money watering drinks down at the club; when Debbie sidles up to the bar and orders a shot what she gets could kindly be described as ‘vodka flavoured’. 

Lou arches an eyebrow at her, spins the bottles around her hands in a way that makes the crowd around the bar ooh and ahh, and jerks her head towards the staff only door. 

Debbie takes the hint. It’s too loud out here to talk, anyway. 

She makes herself at home in the staffroom, pulling open the cupboards until she finds a _real_ drink and pouring a glass. 

Lou joins her about ten minutes later, leaning against the wall and crossing her arms. She’s wearing tight black jeans that make her legs look endless, and Debbie takes a long moment to admire. 

“Don’t give me that,” Lou says, rolling her eyes. “You come here, out of the blue, and then say nothing? I’m not curious.” 

It’s _always_ a con. 

Debbie shouldn’t forget. Lou doesn’t, is setting the rules right now, is letting it play out with her eyes open. 

It’s _always_ a con. 

“Do you remember watching Groundhog Day?” Debbie asks, taking a long drink. 

Lou groans and uncrosses her arms. She spins one of the chairs around and sits on it backwards, resting her forearms on the chair back and letting her hands dangle. “You did_ not_ just come here to talk about old movies,” she says, but with a little bit of doubt like maybe Debbie _might have._

“I’m just curious,” Debbie says, with innocence that no one would believe, let alone Lou Miller. She runs her index finger around the rim of her glass and glances at Lou from beneath her eyelashes. “What would you do if you had that kind of chance?” 

Lou gives her a long slow smile. Eyes open, taking the bait. “Find a pretty girl, do something… exciting. Indulge ourselves.” 

Debbie can work with that. 

“We could do something… exciting,” she says. “I hear the Daytona 200 is on. Hows that sound? Place some bets, take a motorcycle for a spin. I hear you’re into that kind of thing.” 

Lou smiles again, but the amusement is realer, the spark of interest in her eyes brighter. “I don’t think they let you take the superbikes for a spin,” she drawls. 

Debbie tilts her head to the side. “Well, not if you _ask_,” she agrees. The idea had been a joke, but she likes it. Plans are starting to bubble in her mind, ways to accomplish an impossible goal. There’s an energy to it she hasn’t felt for too long. “Think I could make it as a flag girl?” 

Lou’s smile blooms. “Well, it’d make _me_ happy,” she says. “Alright. Give me an hour to pack.” 

Debbie scoffs and stretches her arms above her head. “Pack? We’ll just pick up what we need when we get there.” 

“Oh, we’re doing this old school then?” Lou asks. But she digs her keys out of her pants pocket and dangles them from her hand. “To the airport?” 

“To the airport,” Debbie agrees. 

They actually pay for plane tickets, because airports are high-risk-low-reward targets these days, but some quick talking and a minor disaster happening to their entirely-imaginary luggage gets them upgraded from economy to business class. 

That’s just a gimme. Who flies economy class? 

They arrive in Florida on the redeye, pickpocket some early morning commuters and walk into a hotel room like they own the place. The rhythm of it, with Lou at her side, is as easy as breathing. 

She’s missed this. She hadn’t realised they’d _stopped_. Somewhere between knocking over bingo games and art fraud, life had become _boring. _

Debbie’s never been great with boredom. 

But it won’t be boring now. “Ready to place some bets?” she asks. 

“Always,” Lou says. 

* * *

Around mid-afternoon, when Lou has vanished to the mechanics pit and Debbie has hustled enough merchandise to keep them both dressed, she finds herself bored staring at bikes racing around and around in circles. Then her phone rings. 

It’s Claude. 

She nearly doesn’t answer it but— 

Well. She knows how this is going to play out. Does he? 

“Where are you?” he asks, trying not to sound frantic, like she imagines he really is. “We need to prepare for dinner at _Le Coucou _tonight. I have all the papers… you just need to sign them.” 

“Oh!” Debbie says, like she’s remembering something she forgot. “It completely slipped my mind! Something else came up and I had to leave in a hurry. I’m not even in New York right now. But I’m sure you’ll be _fine;_ we weren’t pulling an Olsen or anything that needs _two_ people on the scene.” 

She imagines she can hear _sheer panic_ in his silence. T-minus four hours and he’s lost his patsy. The day is not looking good for Claude Becker. 

If he drops out entirely, they might not arrest him today. But they have enough to keep investigating and get him eventually. That’s why he needed her to take the fall, to wipe the slate clean. 

Well, tough luck. He’s on his own now, sink or swim. 

Debbie snaps the phone closed. She’s still smiling when Lou comes back. 

* * *

Two days later, when they’ve packed all the goods off to the fence and walked away clean, they buy ice creams and walk down Daytona Beach. 

“So are you gonna tell me?” Lou asks, chasing melting streaks of vivid green pistachio ice cream with her tongue. “What the deal was?” 

“What deal?” Debbie asks. She got a sundae, with a spoon, like a sensible person. 

“All this.” Lou waves her cone, gesturing at the expanse of the beach, of Florida, of their few busy days of crime. “One last hurrah? Is Becker going to make an honest woman of you? Are you giving up your life of crime?” 

Debbie snorts, startled and surprised. In hindsight, it makes sense Lou thinks that her change of heart is something like that. It’s what happened to Tammy. 

“No,” she says. “Claude Becker is probably inside a jail cell as of…” she makes a show of looking at her watch. “...forty eight hours ago.” 

Lou stares at her, actually surprised. 

Debbie smirks at her, lets a little of that terrible cocktail of frustration and betrayal into her expression. “He tried to get me to take the fall,” she says. “Which… I might have. If he’d asked.” 

She’s not proud of that. And she probably wouldn’t have _taken the fall_ — but she might have fixed it for him. 

Riding the wave… you can’t take anyone back with you. But she could have gone back, and back, and back, until the problem didn’t exist anymore. Whatever mistake they’d made, that had put the cops onto them, she could have erased. The ocean erasing marks in the sand. 

“But he didn’t ask,” Lou says. “Well. I never liked him, anyway.” 

Debbie chuckles. She finishes her ice cream and throws the dish in the trash. “You never really answered my question, you know,” she says. “About Groundhog Day. What you’d do.” 

Lou cocks an eyebrow at her. “Of course I did,” she says. But she smiles, long and slow, like she sees the game and will play her part. “What would you do?” 

Debbie takes her hand and links their fingers together. She feels _victorious._ “This.” 


End file.
